An audio recording of this excerpt from “New England Reformers” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844) read by Douglas Storm. The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the reform of Education. The popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things […]

The following poem by Emerson sits as introduction to his essay “Experience.” This is the piece of writing in which he shockingly says, Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son [5-year-old Waldo], now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, — no more. I […]

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — – and our first thought is rendered back […]

Let this serve as a kind of literary addendum to yesterday’s post. And let us first mark out some territory. Perhaps there are two ways that humans MEAN as beings. 1. The animal that may become a god. 2. Animate matter that will decay. That’s broad, sure, and I know there are other ways to […]

We live in a kind of false paradigm of “self-reliance.” I don’t need to blame Waldo for this but perhaps he does bear a good bit of the burden for at the very least his is a kind of Bartlett’s for “individualism.” Living having been usurped by business interests we are inundated with a sermonizing […]

The previous post offers a kind of temperamental and philosophical comparison between two our most fecund writers and thinkers. The section out of Emerson is representative of both his power and his risible ambivalence. This is the Emerson that counsels the soul yet succors the she-wolf of mammon and the passing, scornful Days. He is […]

“All men live enveloped in whale line.” Self-Reliance (Waldo) 1841 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world […]

To be read as postscript to “The Factory Store.” The Future (and Past) is Yours, Young Women! Brought to you by the Cook Group, owners of Bloomington, Indiana, and Ivy Tech, Cook’s publicly subsidized employee training center. Manufacturing Technician Manufacturing technicians are responsible for the manufacture and packaging of potential and existing products. They operate […]

Today, while checking the jobs board at my local school district I noticed a new position (new to me). Here it is: Digital Learning Coach: Coach serves as part of multiple educational teams, providing job-imbedded and ongoing professional development for teachers, staff, and administration. Position plays a very strong role in the analysis and utilization […]

For some weeks (months?) my mind has not been very focused. Rather, perhaps, I do not know how to speak of a right or a wrong when they are so plainly intermixed in our dailiness. No solid ground, Karl (all that is solid melts into air). But I feel a tug to come here and […]